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Library Kicks Off New Year

ST. MARYS — The St. Marys Community Public Library Board of Trustees swore in a returning member and elected its president, vice president and secretary at its regular meeting Wednesday afternoon.

Linda Schloemer was sworn in by Ed Pierce and will be returning to her role as vice president of the board. Bill Angel will serve another term as president, and Ruth Ramsey will serve another term as secretary. Board members also passed a motion to reappoint Fiscal Officer Robert Maurer.

St. Marys Community Public Library Director Sue Pittman updated board members on the Rotary grant.

“The Rotary grant has been submitted, and I’m waiting to hear whether or not we got it,” Pittman said. “We’ll have $1,000 that we can spend from Rotary, that’s what’s in the Rotary budget here in St. Marys ... That is to cover books for the hospice at the hospital and a matching set of hospice books here and books for weight loss to go along with the healthy program (Grand Health Challenge) that’s going on that’s sponsored by the newspaper and the hospital. Those books and DVDs will be here.”

In her statistical report, Pittman noted that circulation is up 739 items compared to November of last year.

Angel discussed the highlights of the marketing committee meeting. The committee is looking into doing more larger programs in order to bring more residents to the library.

“We talked about issues involving marketing the library,” he said. “Paula stated that we’ve had a series of tried and true programs, but it’s the same people showing up and they’re very small. She does a lot of little programs, but it seems to be the same people showing up. She said it might be a better idea to go for a few larger programs that would attract more publicity, more attention and bring in new people.”

He noted that if the library were to host larger programs, the smaller ones would be cut back.

“Ultimately, if we were to go ahead and do that, we would still have some of the older programs, but we’ll cut back,” Angel said. “Like ‘Let’s Talk About It’ we could do once a quarter as opposed to once a month.”

Pittman noted that the committee would like to keep the preschool program, the Animanga program, the grades six through eight book talks and the Tuesday morning book club in addition to the annual summer reading program and the holiday open house.

“We’re going to shake things up a little bit,” Pittman said of the changes in programming that are in the works.

In his technology report to the board, DeWayne Marsee recommended that the board scrap the terminal server after encountering a slew of problems in the installation process.

“I still feel strongly about terminal services,” he said. “I feel strongly that it’s still a good technology to use here, plus it’s going to give us growth if we ever need to add other devices.”

Because of the problems the library has encountered and the comfort level of the staff who manages the computer lab, Marsee said buying new computers would better suit the library and its patrons.

“The recommendation at this point in time is to scrap the terminal services and go ahead and order PCs,” Marsee said.

Board members passed a motion approving the purchase of new computers and a deep freeze program for the computers.

In other business, board members:

• Approved the December meeting minutes.

• Approved the financial report.

• Approved a motion to sell ear buds to patrons for $1.

The next meeting of the St. Marys Community Public Library Board of Trustees will be held at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 1.